Against the Wind (7 page)

It is through scars that stories arrive and depart.

Alain Tanner,
La vallée fantôme

“It's not fair,” said Véronique one afternoon during occupational therapy. Joseph continued working on his painting without missing a word of Véronique's halting sentences, sometimes adding a few words of his own, looking her right in the eye.

“It's not fair…you're making progress…I'm just going around in circles, I'm not doing anything.”

Joseph said that, from his point of view, progress was something “very relative, very uncertain.” And that perhaps Véronique had not yet “come to the end of her sorrow.” As he said these words, he was thinking that you shouldn't try to avoid pain or sadness or even stupidity, and not even madness. You had to go into them, go all the way through them from beginning to end to have any hope of getting over them.

Véronique understood what he was saying. She even agreed with it, only she hadn't “had time to think about these questions” until now. She wanted to play music, to go back to her piano. Just to play music and, “in order to live,” to teach from time to time. “But you understand, Joseph, I feel totally incapable of it. I'm afraid … I'm afraid of my piano. I'll have to tell you the story of the piano. Last night I dreamed of a wonderful black piano, like mine, lying in a ditch. Its keyboard suddenly turned into the jaws of a monster. The monster was a woman … that's what the dream was saying without words. Like a raging wild animal making terrifying sounds…howling…hoarse, throaty cries. I was so afraid I thought I was going to faint…I was limp as a rag. In my dream, I said to myself,
I'm dreaming. If I manage to shout these words at the monster, I'll wake up and I'll be saved.
The words
I'm dreaming
wouldn't come out…it was hurting the back of my throat…I was going to faint … I was dripping with sweat. And then a survival instinct resurfaced from very deep … as if from the centre of the Earth, which was also the centre of my belly. It reached the surface and my mouth opened very wide…I screamed…I screamed, ‘I'm dreaming!' The piano monster vanished. I woke up and cried in your arms, you were sleeping so soundly, until I fell asleep exhausted.”

That evening, Véronique told Joseph “the story of the piano.” The story was so incoherent, it seemed so illogical, that Joseph listened to it without asking any questions, telling himself that Véronique would one day be able to sort it all out. Or to let go of it, perhaps, and replace it with a different story of the piano that had enabled her to become a wonderful performer and to attain such beauty in her body and her playing.

In Véronique's story of the piano, there was a usurped legacy that went back two generations in her mother's family. Véronique told it as if it had happened to herself. There was a portrait of her mother when she was first learning her scales and basic exercises when she was five – a portrait with the vaguely sad
Mona Lisa
smile that was “the spitting image” of the smile of the Holy Virgin hanging at the head of her mother's bed.There was little Véronique, for whom the woman of today wept, a pampered only child held hostage by both her parents, who did not love each other anymore, held her hostage and subjected her to the most subtle blackmail – there was no violence in that perfect, affluent house – to induce her to show a preference for one of them (and hatred for the other).

And there was Véronique's perfection. Her intelligence. Her beauty. Her success. Her total submission to her parents, both of whom she adored, and to their desire that she become a great pianist, an extraordinary interpreter, a virtuoso, admired both for her playing and her personality. Véronique only had to be intelligent, beautiful and charming. She had no other duties. She had known no other law. She had learned neither the Ten Commandments nor the seven deadly sins and she had only the vaguest idea of the strictures, pardons, virtues and indulgences that were the lot of most girls of her generation – in her country, anyway.

“Can you imagine, Joseph? For me, hell, purgatory and all those things you learned about were only vague notions. For me, there was only one heaven – success – and only one law to follow to reach it – obedience to the parents who demanded it.”

Yes, Joseph could imagine it very well, and he was beginning to prefer the terrible hell of his own “age of reason.”

Véronique added, “You see, Joseph, maybe I'll have to hate them. Not both of them. But each of them separately. I ought to hate each of them. But I feel quite incapable of hatred. Just the idea of hatred paralyzes me. Sometimes, I have the impression that if I get close to it, not only touch it but enter into it, I'll freeze on the spot. Or I'll turn into a pillar of salt. I'll become completely catatonic.”

Véronique also spoke to her doctor, Hélène. A little. She preferred to talk to Joseph. Sometimes, Joseph found that Véronique was exaggerating, and gently told her so. He loved her so much that he wouldn't have wanted to do anything to hurt her.

The evening of the piano, he told her the story of Lot's wife, since, thanks to Léopold, he had a pretty good knowledge of the Bible. It was Véronique's image of turning into a pillar of salt that had reminded him of this powerful story from his childhood. He told it in a way that made them both giggle like children, as always happened when they laughed together, rolling on the bed in a boisterous hug after putting out their last cigarette.

Waking up in the night, Joseph announced softly that he was thinking of leaving the hospital soon. His time there was coming to an end. But he would come visit her every day and would write her piles of letters. (“Will you write to me too?” he asked.) And he would wait for her until they were ready to live together. He would wait for her “as long as it takes.” He was in no hurry. They had their whole lives ahead of them to love each other.

Leaving the hospital was far from easy for Joseph. Contrary to what he had wanted so much before being admitted, he was happy to return to his “real life,” to start working again, to see people, especially his friends, but unhappy to have to leave Véronique, although he knew he would see her again and she would be with him, at home, in a little while.

It was not only his beloved Véronique he found heartbreaking to leave, if only for a few days – or weeks, there was no way of knowing for sure, actually – it was this whole place that he had grown attached and accustomed to, that had taught him so much about the madness within and the outward show of “normality,” and about reality and truth, which had often seemed so much more real and true here.

Joseph had become fond of some people, and real friends with a few, over these three weeks, forming relationships that were as real and enduring as those with his friends “outside.”There was Rebecca Goldberg, older than he was and from a very different background, with whom he had formed a close friendship. Rebecca felt the same way, and it was understood that they would continue to see each other in “life outside.” And Dena, his occupational therapist, who had with such intelligence and sensitivity brought him back to his painting. Dena, to whom he would be “eternally grateful,” as he told her. But they too would see each other again. Especially because she and Rebecca were close friends.

But there was also – most of all, because chances were that he would never see them again – his attachment to some of the patients, with whom he'd had such strange and moving exchanges. Such beautiful exchanges, through words, games, paintings, music, sane talk and ravings, sometimes, which Joseph had, for the first time in his life, learned to listen to, to follow in their unique logic that seemed so easily to dispense with the reason with which he had thought until then. Joseph knew that his reason would never be the same again. His mind had been opened to another logic, to other logics, and that would always stay with him. “When I'm ninety,” said Joseph, “I'll still think differently from how I did before coming here.”

Among those “real people” who, without speeches, each one in his or her own fashion, had taught him a different way of seeing the world, there was Lois, a woman in her forties, not beautiful but so engaging, so touching when she was animated that you quickly forgot her physical appearance, Lois, who had a husband and children she loved, except that every five years or so, she would fall into such misery, such melancholy – and she never knew why – that she would have to be hospitalized for a short time.

Lois would sometimes say to Joseph or Véronique, “You don't know, my dear friend, what it is to suffer so much, to break down completely, to just want to die, just to die. Not even knowing why. For days and nights, days and nights!” She would try to describe her condition in words, but she could not. She said that the words had been taken from her long before what had made her so unhappy. She would say, “It's like an emptiness. Like a feeling that's empty, but that hurts. Like an empty, deep anguish that's without substance.Without form. It's within me and all around me…with no limits.”

Joseph and Véronique loved talking to Lois, but they had to accept losing her two or three days a week, each time they came to get her for her electroshock treatment. Joseph was there one day when they were taking her to the “electroshock room,” and she hugged him and said, “Dear, I'm not going to recognize you after I come back from that room. Don't worry. It will last two or three days, and then I'll be with you again.” She added that that was the only way that had been found to alleviate her suffering but that each time she came back, whole chunks of her memory were gone forever. They were killed, Lois said, killed along with the unbearable suffering.

Joseph watched for her return and was stunned when he saw her come out supported by two nurses, her eyes dead and her skin pallid. He followed them discreetly to Lois's room, where they laid her on her bed, and there she remained, totally absent, for three days. But Lois came back to them on the fourth morning as if nothing
had
happened. In fact, for her, nothing had happened. “It's over, my dears. It's over. I was in a vacuum. There's nothing. Nothing to remember.”

There was also Mrs. White, as everybody called her, an old woman from a rich, important family – “Two of my sons are doctors,” she would say proudly – who regularly had to be brought in by her family, who were always so distressed to have to take this responsibility for the mother and grandmother they adored. But they had no choice when she became violent, carrying a butcher knife in her big handbag, strolling the streets of Notre-Dame-de-Bellevue, her affluent suburb, opening the bag and taking out the knife, threatening passersby and ranting incoherently. However, she never attacked anyone. She only threatened people, but that alone caused such an uproar in the little community that the family once again had to resign themselves to “committing” her.Mrs.White, so beautiful with her white hair tied up in a bun, her long lacetrimmed dresses from another era, her gentle voice and delicate hands, her angelic smile like that of a little girl who has played a trick – a good trick – on you.

Mrs. White, who would sneak into the kitchen looking for a knife when no one was there. But each time, the staff would follow her and make her open her bag in front of anyone who happened to be around, and remove the knife and put it back. Then Mrs. White would become so sad, so confused and embarrassed, and would take her fine linen handkerchief from her lace sleeve and bring it to her eyes. But she had no more tears, and she would wipe her dry eyes, saying, “I'm crying without tears. All my tears disappeared in the wild desert where I was lost for so long when I was seventeen.” She would cry loudly without tears until a nurse led her away for an injection.

One day she told Joseph, “my dear boy, Joseph,” that he could not imagine what had happened to her when she was seventeen and had been trapped in the “great desert” of concentration camps and had emptied herself of all her tears and lost part of her soul. Because when she left the desert, almost everyone in her family had been exterminated in the camps. “There are camps in America,” she said, “invisible camps and Shoahs, but I see them. Every time they appear, I absolutely have to find a knife, or else … or else there is death. Not only mine, but the deaths of all those I love. And your death, Joseph, your death.”

Joseph would hug Mrs. White then and ask her to sing the plaintive Yiddish songs that delighted them and made them cry at the same time.

There was Ben, whose family name Joseph did not know, nor his background, a stout, good-natured man who was always walking his imaginary dog, a dog that almost seemed real, so convincing were the movements and gestures Ben made, talking to the dog, whose name was October, as if it were his best friend, obeying without hesitation when October wanted to go somewhere, because October talked to him too and gave him orders when it felt Ben was too absent. “When I'm out of myself, October brings me back to reality,” Ben had confided to Joseph.

Sometimes, Joseph walked with them. The speeches Ben made to October were so fascinating – they were coherent, intelligent, subtle and very erudite – that Joseph learned all kinds of things about history, religion, anthropology, archeology and geology. The history of the universe, the Earth and humanity seemed to hold no secrets for Ben. His corner of the hospital room was filled with books, which he would discuss with October in Joseph's presence and would loan to Joseph with October's consent.

But in life “outside,” people would not tolerate this imaginary October or seeing Ben walk him everywhere and talk to him nonstop, neglecting his work and his family and friends, who no longer recognized him. So he was kept here until the treatment put an end to October, and when the unwelcome guest finally disappeared from Ben's life, he would be returned to “normal life outside,” until the next “crisis.” What Joseph found unfortunate was that with each disappearance of October, Ben would lose his erudition and suddenly stop reading and reflecting. Joseph said to himself that there really should be a world where the two realities – that of October and knowledge and that of Ben living happily in his family, at work and with friends – could coexist in harmony.

It was to Mitchell that Joseph bid the saddest goodbye on the last night, Mitchell, barely twenty years old, with whom he had developed a true friendship of equals. Mitchell, who came from a very wealthyWestmount family, who had dropped out of school at thirteen, getting into more and more serious trouble – all kinds of drugs, alcohol, theft, vandalism on a great many beautiful private properties, including that of his parents, always finishing with a violent attack on his own person, slashing his veins or throwing his body through glass doors or windows – until he was taken away each time in an ambulance, half-dead from loss of blood.

And yet, in the hospital for minds, which he was always happy to come back to, Mitchell was the best-behaved of young men, as gentle as a lamb, as handsome as James Dean, making every heart beat faster. Everyone marvelled at his lively, loquacious intelligence. He read, discussed things with depth and subtlety, drew beautifully and won at all the games he organized with enthusiasm and charm – cards, Scrabble, chess.

The team responsible for Mitchell – psychiatrist, psychologist, nurses, social worker, occupational therapist and others – had recently summoned him to a meeting and threatened to transfer him to a “long-term” psychiatric hospital, the Douglas, to be precise. He was so terrified by this prospect that he had attempted suicide that night in his bed, opening his veins once again. Just before the point of no return, he had howled like a wolf for several hellish minutes. Joseph had not known that a human being could actually howl like a wolf.

On the last night, Joseph got permission to go through the huge old iron door of the psychiatric ward, which was locked from the outside, to visit his friend, who was convalescing in the emergency ward. He found Mitchell huddled in the white bed, looking like a wolf that had been hunted down, a frozen, shivering wolf with the face of an old man already visible underneath the terrified expression of the boy. Joseph took his hand. Like an animal, Mitchell jerked his arm back and buried it under his head, which he turned away and hid under the sheet. Leaving the young-old wolf that he no longer recognized, Joseph went back upstairs to his room. Alone.

While he was mechanically packing his bags, Véronique quietly came in and tiptoed over to him. Joseph rushed to take her in his arms and said with a dry sob, “Véronique, sometimes we have to say goodbye to friendships.”